Doncaster

“ A system of electric tramways connects the town with its principal suburbs. The agricultural trade is extensive, and there are iron, brass and agricultural machine works. Doncaster lies on the outskirts of a populous district extending up the valley of the Don. ”

“ Its very stateliness is exaggerated by the dead level of the town and today it rises dim and vast against the leaden, rain-swept sky, but though it is easily the most conspicuous object in the town, the fine old church does not constitute Doncaster’s chief claim to fame. Here is the horse-racing center of York [Pg 255] shire, and on its “Leger Day” it is probably the liveliest town in England. The car shops of the Great Northern Railway keep it quietly busy for the rest of the year. ”

“ HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH DONCASTER. THOMAS, EARL OF LANCASTER. EDWARD IV. ASKE'S INSURRECTION. ILLUSTRIOUS VISITORS. JAMES I. BARNABEE. CHARLES I. CHURCH LIBRARY.
They unto whom we shall appear tedious, are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spare that labour which they are not willing to endure.
HOOKER.
Nothing more than the scanty notices which have already been mentioned is recorded concerning the history of Doncaster, till King John ordered it “to be enclosed with hertstone and pale, according as the ditch required ”

“ Not only was it far inland, bringing a considerable district into communication with the sea, but it was situated—eight miles south-east of Doncaster—on the Great North Road, at the point where this road enters the county of York. Until the navigation of the Don was improved, under an Act passed in 1727, the Hull, Trent, Idle and Bawtry route was preferred to the Hull, Ouse, Aire, Don, and Doncaster route alike for foreign imports into Yorkshire and for Yorkshire products consigned to London or to places abroad ”

“ Doncaster was evidently a borough held of the crown for a fee farm rent before 1194, when Richard I. granted and confirmed to the burgesses their soke and town to hold by the ancient rent and by twenty-five marks yearly. The town was incorporated in 1467 by Edward IV., who granted a gild merchant and appointed that the town should be governed by a mayor and two serjeants-at-mace elected every year by the burgesses. Henry VII., while confirming this charter in 1505, granted further that the burgesses should hold their town and soke with all the manors in the soke on payment of a fee farm. ”

“ In Edward the Confessor's reign, the soccage part of Doncaster and of some adjoining townships was under the manor of Hexthorp, though in the topsy-turveying course of time Hexthorp has become part of the soke of Doncaster. Earl Tostig was the Lord of that manor, one of Earl Godwin's sons, and one who holds like his father no honorable place in the records of those times, but who in the last scene of his life displayed a heroism that may well redeem his name. The manor being two miles and a half long, and one and a half broad, was valued at eighteen pounds yearly rent ”

“ The dentists’ instruments are rusting in their drawers, and their horrible cool parlours, where people pretend to read the Every-Day Book and not to be afraid, are doing penance for their grimness in white sheets. The light-weight of shrewd appearance, with one eye always shut up, as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in all seasons, who usually stands at the gateway of the livery-stables on very little legs under a very large waistcoat, has gone to Doncaster. ”

“ But Dick was too angry to listen; at last, when master was telling him some long story about the Duke of Doncaster, Blewitt burst out—
“A plague on the Duke of Doncaster! Come, come, Mr. Deuceace, don't you be running your rigs upon me; I ain't the man to be bamboozl'd by long-winded stories about dukes and duchesses. You think I don't know you; every man knows you and your line of country. Yes, you're after young Dawkins there, and think to pluck him ”

“ Where the work of the spirit comes in, it effects such a difference between the two peoples as lies between an Eisteddfod and a horse-race. While all the singers of Wales met in artistic emulation at their national musical festival at Rhyl, all the gamblers of England met in the national pastime of playing the horses at Doncaster. More money probably changed hands on the events at Doncaster than at Rhyl, and it was characteristic of the prevalent influence in the common civilization (if there is a civilization common to both races) that the King was at Doncaster and not at Rhyl. ”

“ Danum, moreover, the modern Doncaster, the Campodonum of Dede, was decidedly a Northumbrian town, and yet it stood on the south bank of the Don. On the whole, the question seems to resolve itself into a balance of probabilities—where in one scale we have the convenience of having the line of demarcation so fixed and notorious as would be the course of such a river as the Don, and in the other what may be called the prescriptive claim of the present Yorkshire boundary. ”

“ George's is the only church in Doncaster, a town which in the year 1800, contained 1246 houses, 5697 souls: twenty years afterwards the houses had increased to 1729, and the inhabitants to 8544. The state having made no other provision for the religious instruction of the townspeople than one church, one vicar, and one curate—if the vicar from other revenues than those of his vicarage can afford to keep one— the far greater part of the inhabitants are left to be absenters by necessity, or dissenters by choice. ”

“ On that occasion almost every mansion in the county was filled with visitors "invited down" for the races, and there was no doubt that agricultural Yorkshire owed much of its prosperity to the breeding of its fine horses. The racecourse was situated on a moor a little way out of the town, the property of the Corporation, and it was said that the profit made by the races was so great that the Doncaster people paid no rates. ”

“ The human leaf in constant bud and fall?
The generations of deciduous man
How often hast thou seen them pass away!
HURDIS.
The ecclesiastical history of Doncaster is not so much to the credit of all whom it concerns, as the municipal. Nigel Fossard in the year 1100, granted the advowson of its church to St. Mary's Abbey, York; and it was for rather more than two hundred years a rectory of two medieties, served by two resident rectors whom the Abbey appointed. In 1303, Archbishop Corbridge appropriated it to the abbey, and ordained it a perpetual vicarage. ”

“ It was said that there were races at Doncaster in the seventeenth century, but the great St. Leger was founded by General St. Leger in 1778, and the grand stand was built in the following year. The Yorkshire gentlemen and farmers were naturally all sportsmen, and were credited with keeping "both good stables and good tables." The invitation to "have a bite and a sup" was proverbial, especially in the wold or moorland districts, where hospitality was said to be unbounded.
A learned man wrote on one occasion that "an honest walk is better than a skilled physician. ”

“ From this it followed, as indeed the inspector had known, that passengers to and from Hull had two points of connection with the main line, either direct to Selby, or through Goole to Doncaster.
He began to study the trains. The first northwards was the 4 p.m. dining-car express from King’s Cross to Newcastle. It left Doncaster at 7.56 and reached Selby at 8.21. Would Archer travel by it? And if he did, what would be his next move?
For nearly an hour Willis sat huddled up in the corner of a seat, his eye on Archer in the distance, and his mind wrestling with the problem. ”

“ The officer whom he superseded, Sir Henry Cholmley, complained bitterly of his supersession, and refused obedience to Rainborowe, who, retiring to Doncaster, left Cholmley to carry on the siege till parliament should determine the dispute. A party of cavaliers from Pontefract made their way through the besiegers and surprised Rainborowe in his quarters at Doncaster. Their object was to carry him off in order to exchange him for Sir Marmaduke Langdale, then a prisoner to the parliament ”

“ In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster. ”

“ That this part of the North Road was considered unsafe for travellers as early as Edward I.’s reign is shown by the fact that a party going from Scotland to Winchester, and for most of the journey guarded by a dozen archers, saw fit to increase their number of guards to twenty between Pontefract and Tickhill, the latter being on the border of Yorkshire and Nottingham, south of Doncaster. ”

“ As far as Nottingham you will travel very soon, and then as far as Doncaster, therefore it will be but impertinent to give you an account of the road or anything concerning it. I will only tell your Grace I saw Nottingham [121] Castle, [236] where there is beauty and magnificence worthy the wisdom and the riches of your ancestors. As we came nearer to this place, the country grew more wild, but not less beautiful ”

“ On September 12, 1857, Dickens announced that he and his companion were on their way to Doncaster, en route for London. Breaking the journey at Lancaster, they stopped at another delightful hostelry, the King’s Arms in Market Street. “We are in a very remarkable old house here,” wrote Dickens to his sister-in-law, “with genuine old rooms and an uncommonly quaint staircase. I have a state bedroom, with two enormous red four-posters in it, each 150 as big as Charley’s room at Gad’s Hill.” ”

“ Identified as the private residence of Dr. Strong in “David Copperfield.”
We are assured by Forster that the description here given in “The Lazy Tour” of Doncaster and the races emanated from the pen of Wilkie Collins; I venture, however, to believe that Dickens is more likely to have composed the chapter in question, for not only is it written in his characteristic vein, but we find that when at Doncaster Thomas Idle (i.e., Collins) continued to suffer severely from the accident to his ankle, which practically incapacitated him, and evidently prevented him from witnessing the races. ”

“ Fortunately the rest of the company were in a great degree disused to such subjects, and the conversation being diversified, Maria, though much less brilliant than usual, took some part in it; and as they got beyond the bounds of Nottinghamshire, they all joined in celebrating the praises of Yorkshire. Having dined at Doncaster, they, about six in the evening, arrived at Ferrybridge. Here our hero had intended to wait for the Glasgow mail, to convey him to Carlisle ”

“ He had gone to Doncaster when the event which made him a father and a widower took place; and having made rather a good thing of the expedition, he returned to town in very tolerable spirits, and felt that he should now be more interesting and irresistible than ever as a young widower, and could easily get over the inconsolable stage by a trip on the Continent. His dead wife's sister-in-law, the Hon. Mrs. Philip Stanbourne, undertook very gladly to look after the little motherless infant, at whom the elegant Ned barely glanced, during her days of babyhood ”

“ They left him to nature and to death, which was waiting at his doors. The word went now through the army, 'Every man to Doncaster.' There lay Shrewsbury and the Duke of Norfolk, with a small handful of disaffected men between themselves and London, to which they were going.
They marched from Pomfret in three divisions. Sir Thomas Percy, at the head of five thousand men, carried the banner of St Cuthbert. In the second division, over ten thousand strong, were the musters of Holderness and the "West Riding, with Aske himself and Lord Darcy. ”

“ Doubt not, my lord, that I will adventure anything. I know too well what danger it should be to the whole realm if we were overthrown. Now shall appear whether for favour of these countrymen I forbare to fight with them at Doncaster, as ye know the King’s Highness showed me it was thought by some I did. Those that so said shall now be proved false liars.” [232]
A battle is imminent, but the rebels disperse.
Martial law proclaimed in Westmoreland and the North Riding of Yorkshire.
The king requires the monks and canons who have been faulty to be tied up. ”

“ Subsequently Aske, followed by 30,000 or 40,000 men, proceeded towards Doncaster, where lay the duke of Norfolk with the royal forces, which, inferior in numbers, would probably have been overwhelmed had not Aske persuaded his followers to accept the king’s pardon, and the promise of a parliament at York and to disband. ”

“ In the extreme north and east, where the English or Anglian blood is purest, or is mixed only with Danes and Northmen to any large extent, such forms as Lancaster, Doncaster, Caistor, and Casterton abound. In the mixed midlands and the Saxon south, the sound softens into Chesterfield, Chester, Winchester, and Dorchester. In the inner midlands and the Severn vale, where the proportion of Celtic blood becomes much stronger, the termination grows still softer in Leicester, Bicester, Cirencester, Gloucester, and Worcester, while at the same time a marked tendency towards elision occurs ”

“ He saw the King, and wrote out for him a straightforward and manly statement of his conduct—extenuating nothing—boasting of nothing—relating merely the simple and literal truth. Henry repeated his assurance to him that the Parliament should meet at York; and Aske returned, hoping perhaps against hope, at all events, exerting himself to make others hope, that the promises which ihey supposed to have been made to them at Doncaster would eventually be fulfilled. To one person only he ventured to use other language. ”